To know the nature of a man, noted J. G. Hamann in 1759 in his Morsels, Crumbs, and Fragments, you must inquire about the conditions of his life. The 24 essays in the present volume reveal Hamann s position at the crossroads of different social constellations. They raise new questions about the Konigsberg scholar s ideas regarding the history of society and religion, social theory, economics, philosophy, political science, and religious studies. In this way, they help us to more precisely locate Hamann s place in the key discourses of the Enlightenment."

When the University of Halle-Wittenberg founded the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies in 1993, it was following the destiny of its history as a centre of the early Enlightenment in Germany which affected the whole of Europe. Research foci of the Centre are at the moment aesthetics, discourses of history, cultures of learning and erudition, university history and not least the wide field of early Enlightenment as a field of experimentation and the foundation of cultural models for the Modern Age. The results of this research have been published since Autumn 1995 in the Centres' research publications series entitled University of Halle Series on the European Enlightenment. In addition, there have been relevant works produced outside the Centre. Two to four volumes are published annually (monographs, collected volumes, commentaries on sources).

The volume goes back to a symposium in Halle in 1998. It essays an examination of the relationship of Christian Thomasius (1655-1733) to the literature and scholarly culture of the period in terms of Pierre Bourdieu's theories on literary and intellectual 'fields'. Taking the concept of field as a more or less explicit heuristic focus on a given subject, the articles inquire into Thomasius' literary and cultural knowledge, his aesthetic and poetological concepts and ideals and the 'economic' aspects of his practical efforts as a scholar, satirist and critic. They also cast light on the impulses he provided for the literary environment. The remaining contributions examine the field structures themselves in which he and the authors he refers to were active, both locally (in Leipzig and Halle) and more widely as a result of the dissemination by print media.